


Do the Necessary

by Anathema Device (notowned)



Series: Necessary things [1]
Category: London Spy
Genre: M/M, fixit, that last ep was crazy man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notowned/pseuds/Anathema%20Device
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows on directly from the end of S1 ep5. Danny gets visitors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do the Necessary

There wasn’t much that could be said, in the end. Danny’s initial euphoria at Frances’s sudden change of heart wore off in less than a minute, and the dull misery that had lately replaced his fear and rage, flooded back. The car was probably bugged—the second thing Frances had done after she’d jumped in the Jensen was to point to the dashboard and put her finger to her lips—so they couldn’t talk freely there.

Danny had driven barely quarter of a mile before she held up both hands, fingers crossed. “I’m sorry, Danny, but I’ve changed my mind. There’s no point to this.” She shook her head. “I can’t go back, but I think I’ll stay with my sister for a few days. Drop me at the train station. And don’t contact me again.” Lowering her hands, she reached silently for her purse, and extracted a small notebook and pen.

_I’ll contact you._

Danny nodded, then concentrated on the road again. He half wished she’d meant it. Change of heart or not, he didn’t like her. Frances had lied to Alex all his life, brought him up in a home devoid of almost all affection, and colluded with his murderers. Could he trust a woman who could do this to her own son, even if only an adopted—stolen—one? He was sick to death of betrayal.

Her faint perfume lingered in the car after she left at the station. Danny resented that. Resented that Scottie’s honest scent of Scotch and damp wool and old fashioned aftershave had been tainted by something so foreign. Something unwanted. Danny had the house, the books, the money, the Jensen, the carefully chosen art works. Scottie’s clothes. Scottie’s sad collection of sex toys. Everything but the man himself.

Still, Danny begrudged the smallest loss of the least trace of Scottie’s existence. He had lost too much already. He wished Frances had never entered the car. Wished that Frances had never entered his life, or coveted a genius child. How much had come from that. How much sorrow.

He put the car in the garage, the security light guiding him to the door. He didn’t put on the foyer light—he knew the house now as well as he thought he’d known Scottie. Which was, in the end, not well enough.

He hung up his coat, and walked into the kitchen. He reached for the kettle, and went to flick the light switch for the kitchen. Before he reached it, another hand, much larger than his own, clamped over his mouth, covering it with tape, Danny’s upper body wrapped into immobility by massive arms. He tried to kick back but was shoved hard against the stove, trapped. Screaming only made his captor clamp down harder, as something was forced over his ears.

Headphones.

“Be quiet, Danny. This house is bugged. We’re not here to hurt you.”

Yeah, like he believed that. He tried to shake the giant off. “Come to the basement. We just want to talk.” The voice had continued over his struggles, repeating the same message over and over. A recording?

He gave in. If they wanted him dead, he’d die. He already knew he couldn’t win against this lot.

The giant released him, though he didn’t remove the tape. He gripped Danny’s right arm, urging him to turn around and start walking. The stranger guided him towards the basement door, and carefully, though with no less strength behind the guiding hand, helped him down the unlit stairs. When Danny stumbled, the strong hand caught him safely. No, they didn’t want him dead. Not yet, anyway. But that wasn’t necessarily good news.

He heard the door above him close, and the basement light came on, blinding him. He shaded his eyes, finding the edge of the tape over his mouth, and ripping it off.

“Fuck.” That hurt. “Was that really necessary?” He knocked the headphones to the ground, kicking them away, and flicked the tape from his fingers.

“Please sit down, Danny.” The voice came not from behind him, but to his side, where Scottie had stored his tools in neat racks. A woman’s voice. “There’s a chair.”

A ratty old kitchen chair. God knows why Scottie kept it. He hated broken things, and there was nothing in the house that was abused or in disrepair. Some sentimental attachment? So much Danny hadn’t known about Scottie.

“Please, Danny. We are not here to hurt you, but we must speak without being discovered.” The woman stepped forward. A small woman in a suit, plain, short utilitarian hair tending to grey. Everything about her said ‘civil servant’.

Danny remained standing. “I don’t like being interrogated.”

The woman nodded, not at Danny, but the man behind him. “This isn’t an interrogation. We don’t want information.”

“Are you going to threaten me? Me?” He laughed. “Oh, this’ll be good.”

“Nor to threaten,” she continued smoothly. “We’re from MI6.”

“And this is supposed to reassure me? You killed Alex. You’ll kill me if you want to. You kill anyone who gets in your way.”

“I think you’ve watched too much James Bond. There is no such thing as a license to kill.”

Danny’s vision greyed in rage. “You killed my lover, gave me HIV! There’s nothing you won’t do to get what you want. If you came here to tell me more lies, you’re wasting my time.” He turned to head up the stairs, and faced the man mountain. A tall, handsome, extremely well built black guy. “Are you going to shoot me? Because that’s what you’ll have to do to stop me.” The man didn’t move.

“Alex isn’t dead. And we didn’t give you HIV.”

Her words dropped into the cold silence like falling icicles. Danny’s heart stuttered, and he stumbled a little. The big man’s hand came up to support him. Danny slapped it away. “Lies,” he croaked out through a tight throat.

“Neil, please help Danny to the chair. Find something for us to sit on too, please?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He pronounced it “marm” like she was the Queen, and Danny, already close to hysteria, choked down the utterly inappropriate giggle.

‘Neil’ guided him, not unkindly, to the battered kitchen chair, and dragged out a bench that had probably belonged in the garden at some point. Danny sat. He refused to look at either of them.

“We don’t have much time,” the woman said, taking a seat beside her colleague.

“Who are you? And why don’t you have much time? Got another spy to murder?”

She sighed as if dealing with a misbehaving child. “You may call me ‘Mary’.”

“Not your real name.”

“No. We don’t have much time because we don’t want another death on our hands.”

Danny laughed, and looked up at her. “I thought you said Alex wasn’t dead.” He wanted to seem indifferent, mocking. But his hands clenched into fists anyway.

“Not Alex’s death. Scottie. We believe Scottie was murdered. It was well staged, well enough for the police to be satisfied, but not quite perfectly. He left clues for us to find.”

Danny closed his eyes. Just when he thought he had suffered so much, felt so much pain, that nothing else could touch him. “He wrote a note.”

“Yes. We believe that was written some time before, though it may have been forced on him. Scottie had been suicidal on and off for a long time. He wouldn't seek help.”

“You...you switched his meds.”

“No.” Mary’s gaze was unwavering. But Danny already knew MI6 schooled their people in the art of lying with a straight face. “Not us.”

“Why would anyone—?”

“Wait. Please. I know you have questions, but we must hurry. You need to know the truth now because you’re blundering around like a bluebottle in a jar, and if you don’t stop, this time Alastair—Alex—could really die.”

“You’re months and months too late for that threat, ‘ _Mary’_.”

“No. He’s alive. Did it ever occur to you that the reason you too are alive, and have been so very carefully kept that way, is because of him?”

Danny ran over the events of the last six months. “No. I can honestly say I don’t think anyone was being careful with me.”

‘Neil’ snorted. It sounded like derision. Charming.

“How easy would it be to stage the death of someone like you, with your sexual history and drug taking? Another dead junkie. No one would have batted an eyelid.”

“So you decided to destroy my life instead. Ta very much.”

Mary actually rolled her eyes, and glanced at Neil. “To think Alastair said he was brighter than he looked.” Neil snorted again.

“Look, do you mind—?”

She held up her hand. “Stop. These are the facts, whether you want to believe us or not. Alex is alive, but in danger. Scottie was murdered by those hunting Alex and his research. You are alive because Alex wants it and because we need you to be. You almost certainly got HIV through sex with Alex—”

“No!”

“Yes.  I’m sorry, Danny, but that’s the truth. He didn’t know until after you became lovers. Not, in fact, until we had to extract him from the situation.”

Situation? “He was a virgin!”

Mary’s expression didn’t change, but Danny got the impression anyway that he had been unnecessarily...vulgar. “Possibly. But he was still infected. We have suspicions as to how. You must have acquired the infection from him.”

One torn condom in eight months. And blow jobs. Low risk, not no risk. _Fuck_.

“That escort? He was working for you?”

“Of course not. Though we knew of his encounters with Alastair, of course.”

Danny’s head hurt. He wanted a drink, or something stronger. “How can he be alive? Frances saw you torturing him. You killed him, and arranged for me to find the body. He had a fucking funeral.”

 _Two funerals._ And then one for Scottie. Danny put a fist on his chest, over his heart. Christ it hurt.

“We arranged for you to find _a_ body. And Frances saw him tortured, that’s true.”

“So you admit—”

“Alastair Turner is a genius, the like of which we have rarely seen, but he is utterly inept as an actor. She had to believe what she saw, and we had to make him make her believe.” She gave a small shrug. “It’s nothing more than all our field operatives go through in training. He wasn’t physically injured.”

Danny’s fist uncurled, became a claw he wanted to wrap around her neck. “You’re monsters.”

“On the contrary. We believe our people need to be prepared for the worst. The SAS does the same. It’s not a nice world out there. I know you know that. Now do you want to listen or not?”

Danny slumped. He didn’t believe her. He _wanted_ to believe her because that meant Alex...but it also meant Scottie....

“Why kill him?” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Why kill _him_?”

She paused. Danny’s suspicions rose to danger levels. “We’re not sure. He wasn’t tortured, at least not physically. It probably wasn’t for anything that they wanted to know. By then they knew you had the drive, and what was on it. It’s possible, more than possible, he had stumbled across something he didn’t know the importance of, and they wanted that knowledge kept secret. Or his role in tamping down your wilder ideas may have interfered with their wishes. In the end, we believe he chose to die to save you.”

“No. No!” Danny slammed out of the chair, ran to the stairs. Neil caught him, pinned him easily. “You’re lying!”

“You don’t believe Scottie would die for you?” Mary said, voice dry and emotionless. “Look around you, Danny. Look where you live.”

Neil kept his grip. Danny hung his head. No. Not Scottie. Danny wasn’t worth....

“He knew the risk when he decided to work with us on this. It’s not your fault.”

“You’re lying.”

Neil pushed him back to the chair, not so kindly this time. “Sit down and shut up.” Not as polite as his boss, either.

Mary’s expression hadn’t changed, as if Danny’s freakout was some minor social error, to be ignored. “It’s the truth. We knew about you and Alex, of course, and his sexuality. It’s been a long time since being gay was a problem for us. We knew about his research too.” At Danny’s look, she smiled tightly. “For heaven’s sake, apply your mind. It was our flat. Our laptop. Our internet connection. Not to mention the fact he told us. He’d been working on it for about a year.”

“Then—”

The admonishing hand rose again. “Wait. The problem came when what he was really doing leaked out to the other side.”

“Al Qaeda?”

Neil’s snort came as Mary shook her head. “There are many enemies of our country, and some of them live here in Britain. One of them is Charles Turner.”

“His _father_?”

“As you know, not his real father. And yes. A foolish man is ripe for recruitment. A foolish, disgraced, and above all, _greedy_ man, even more so.”

“Frances—”

Her mouth thinned. “Is not behind this, or working with him. But in her own way, she’s as big a fool as he is, and just as dangerous, especially now. We used her to lay cover, telling her that you needed to be dissuaded from your efforts, but she almost certainly created the situation that her husband has exploited. He’s been offering Alex to the highest bidder for some time. Frances didn’t know, just as she didn’t know what her ‘son’ was working on.”

“She does now.”

“No, she doesn’t. You don’t either. You think we need a computer programme to tell when someone is lying? Danny, how do you think our Diplomatic service could operate if we couldn’t? How could the intelligence service?”

Danny could only stare. “Professor Shaw said—”

“Exactly what we told him to say. Marcus Shaw works for us. As Scottie did.”

“You threw Scottie out of MI6.”

“Yes. A regrettable mistake. But he kept his contacts, and his discretion, and from time to time, he did little jobs for us, which is how he could afford this particular...lifestyle.” She swept her hand to indicate the basement, the lovely house.

Danny should have realised all of it was beyond the means of your average retired civil servant. Editing academic papers wouldn’t pay for petrol, let alone the car.

Was that a pitying look from Neil?

“Why?” Danny whispered.

“I told you. Because Alex insisted and we needed you. We protected you. We also used you. A grieving lover is a very good way of demonstrating the veracity of someone’s death. Which we needed.”

“I was arrested—”

“Oh, that was your own fault. You had to talk to the papers. What did you think would happen, going to a tabloid? You got yourself fired. You made the police pay attention. And so we gave them enough information to keep them busy, and you out of trouble. You were never charged. You would never have been charged. Though in the end, your actions served our purpose.”

Danny went through what he’d been told—he refused to call them ‘facts’. Everything fitted, but they were so good at manipulating...everything. “Prove Alex is alive. Let me talk to him.”

“No. You and he will not meet again. It has to be this way.”

“Then you can bugger off with your fairy tales.”

Mary gestured. “Neil? If you would be so kind.”

From his pocket, Neil pulled out an iPhone. “I thought I couldn’t talk to him,” Danny said, hope rising sickeningly.

“You can’t. But, anticipating your reaction, he recorded a message. Neil, I think Danny would like the headphones. For privacy,” she added, nodding at Danny.

Numb, and past being able to tell what was and wasn’t real any more, Danny allowed Neil to place the headphones on him, cue up the movie, and hand the phone to him. Danny touched the screen, to start the recording.

 _Alex_. It was him. His real face. But when?

“Danny, if you’re listening to this, it’s because we—I—need you to believe what you’re being told. I’m alive. I—” Alex choked, beautiful face miserable. God, he looked so tired. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying. “I can’t tell you where I am. I can never tell you. But I’m alive, and I need you to stay that way. You’re in danger. You must let them help you. Don’t trust my parents. I...I love you. Goodbye, Danny.”

Alex reached out as if trying to touch Danny through the screen, and the clip ended. Danny rubbed the iPhone’s glass. “Goodbye,” he whispered. He looked up at Mary. “He could have made this any time.”

“Yes. This _could_ all be a lie. Or it could be the truth. Danny, you are putting yourself at terrible risk trying to reveal carefully constructed, elaborate decoy research, made by Marcus Shaw. It works just as he says it does, but it’s not what Alex was working on.”

“Why did Alex hide it? Why lead me to it?”

“He didn’t. We did, with his cooperation, as another way of reinforcing the narrative that he was killed for his work. He wanted you to find it, to take it away or report it. Both would work. He gave us the code for the flash drive, though he wasn’t sure you could crack it. It did take you long enough,” she said, lifting an eyebrow in obvious disdain. “The other side obtained the file not long after you did.”

Danny frowned at her. “Then why the fuck go to all the trouble of stopping me getting it to the newspapers?”

“Because revealing it publicly would mean clever observers would work out it wasn’t important enough to kill someone over. Scottie and Marcus had a plan to deflect you from revealing it. We anticipated your reaction, your attempts to expose it. But we hadn’t anticipated that the other side would remove Scottie. When he was killed, we had to make it clear for your sake that you no longer had the file or any copies of it, and so you would not be able to do anything further to release it. Frances was told to destroy any copy you gave her, for national security reasons. Had she not done so, she would not be free at this moment.”

Danny drew in a breath. Never mind alcohol, just some water would be nice. “Then why am I still in danger?”

“They know what you found is not the research Alex was working on. And you, because of your connection to Alex, may be the very person to lead them to the real thing. You and Frances. Danny, we have a mole. A mole who knows what Alex was really working on. If the mole finds out Alex is alive, you, his mother, even Frances, would be targeted to force him to cooperate.”

Danny stood again, walked around in a futile attempt to relieve rising stress. “I don’t understand. Why not...I dunno...put us into protective custody? Take me to Alex?” He stopped, and turned to look at Mary and Neil. “Because of Charles.”

“Precisely. Charles. Alex’s father and the mole. We want the network. It’s the only way to be really sure.”

“Then Alex can come home?” But she was already shaking his head. “Never?”

“The risk is too high of his being discovered. You aren’t known for your discretion, and he...would make mistakes, if you were with him. Mistakes which could be fatal, not just to him.” Danny began to protest. “No. You have no power to make us change our minds on this. He’s too important.”

Her fingers twitched and Danny realised she was a smoker. He did the same thing when he needed a fag and couldn’t have one. “We need your help. Frances doesn’t know we suspect Charles. Her loyalty to him is nonexistent, but she too was disgraced. We can’t be sure resentment over that might not tip her over, and she is, as you will have discovered, a person with many secrets, and hidden motivations.”

“I don’t—”

“Her defection wasn’t anticipated. Nothing in her profile or previous behaviour indicated she would abandon Charles. It’s upset our plans and makes the future harder to predict. However, so long as Charles believes that Alex is dead but the research can still be obtained, we are reasonably sure that the mole will keep in contact with him as a conduit to the other side. We can use the research as bait.”

“Me and Frances?”

“Red herrings. While you are both clumsily trying to prove MI6 murdered Alex, MI6 doesn’t have to work so hard to hide the fact Alex was never murdered.”

“But Scottie knew he was alive. Why didn’t he tell...them?” _Or me_?

“He didn’t. He believed Alex was dead, but murdered by the other side. That they set up that scene to cause a scandal, and that we needed that scandal not to erupt. So he was set to manage you, protect you, and once we knew you had cracked the code to the drive, deflect you. But he wanted to tell you what he imagined to be the truth, which we found irritating. We had to lean on him a bit.”

“Kill him, you mean.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Threaten to make the fake cancellation of his club membership the real thing, actually. We didn’t kill him. Do pay attention, Danny.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why not kill me instead?”

“Broken levers don’t work well.” That was from Neil. “Ma’am?”

She threw up her hands. “You may as well.”

“Do you play chess, Danny?”

“Not very well.”

“You don’t have to. But you understand the idea that you surround your king with less valuable pieces so they can be sacrificed while the king is safe and the bishops and knights attack?”

It was Danny’s turn to snort. “I know what a pawn is.”

“Then why are you having trouble with this?”

“Because Scottie....” He swallowed and wanted to vomit. “Scottie was better than me. More important than me.”

“Yes, he was. But not to them. Not to Alex. In the end, we’re all pawns to them.”

Neil held Danny’s gaze until Danny nodded. Then Neil rose. “Ma’am?”

Mary stood and smoothed her skirt. “Danny, we told you all this because of Frances. She’s capable of doing serious damage to our plans because she knows so much more about how we operate. We need you to go along with her but, at the same time, act as a restraining hand.”

“How? I don’t know her, and if I try and stop her, she won’t listen.”

“Oh, but she will. We heard your conversations tonight. You are remarkably persuasive. All you have to do is be...a little less persuasive. More disillusioned.”

Danny coughed, holding back a laugh. “That’ll be so hard,” he muttered.

“Yes, quite. Let her talk, make plans. Encourage her desire to keep away from Charles. All you have to do is do what you have been doing, and let us do our job. Oh, and stay away from the press and Detective Taylor. The papers will make it worse, and Taylor will end up dead.”

“How do I even know you’re who you say you are?” Though he knew in his gut she was.

He didn’t like the smile she gave him. “You don’t, but you’ll work it out eventually. Neil? We’re leaving. Danny, go to bed as normal. Act normally. It won’t be for much longer, I hope. Meet Frances when you’re contacted, but she must not know what you have been told tonight, for her sake and yours. Above all, for Alex’s sake. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are done. Goodnight, Danny. Neil, the light.”

“Wait!” Danny walked over to them. Neil paused, hand on the light switch. “Please, can you...can you tell Alex that—”

Mary’s smile this time was kinder. “No, I can’t. You can never meet or talk again.” Danny blinked, his eyes full of acid tears. “However, you may like to consider the phone in your pocket.”

Danny shook his head in confusion. “What?”

“Your phone. Is it the same model as you had seven years ago? Do you think you’ll be using it in five years? Technology moves on quickly. Innovations become obsolete with frightening frequency. Once we needed geniuses to program computers. Now any moderately competent individual can learn to do so. The light, Neil.”

The basement went dark, and footsteps rose on the stairs, the door opening and closing far too fast for Danny to process what ‘Mary’ had just said. Did she really mean...?

Did he even dare to believe it? “Alex,” he whispered. “I will love you always. I hope you know that.”

*****

Alex Turner took the headphones off. His lips moved but no sound came out.

“That went reasonably well.”

Alex turned to his boss. “Danny is smarter than you think.”

“He only needs to be smart enough to play ball. Happy now?”

“No.” Alex’s boss’s dark face registered alarm at his answer. “I need to get back to work now, sir.”

“All right. If that’s what you want. Though if you want a little time—?”

“I just want to finish the current project.”

“Okay. Get onto it then.”

Alex left the room, wondering if the man who ran his life for now was less intelligent than Alex had thought. How could he be happy? It was a stupid thing to ask.

He would work hard, do what was necessary. And do his damndest to become as obsolete as punched cards.

Danny had to be there when that happened. He _would_ be there.

_Always._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this worked for you. Any comments, corrections, criticisms, or suggestions most welcome. Although this is my first fanfiction in more than ten years, I have written plenty of fanfic in my time, as well as pro novels, so don't spare my feelings :)


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